VERONICA

BAMBERG, FRANCONIA, 1629

I grew stronger through those fresh days of spring as the snow melted and the flowers began to bloom. I grew stronger still through the summer as the sun warmed my body, and as the days lengthened my spirit also rebuilt itself. At first I had been plagued by crippling nightmares and jumped with terror at the call of crows. I scanned the forest for unwanted shadows and missed Christoff through the warm months. He had gone to help his mother move away from the town to somewhere far from the witch hysteria that had infested Franconia.

I was still what Frau Berchta called ‘elf-thin’ and my hair had not yet reached down past my shoulders, but my legs were healing and the scars were simply the trails and shapes of a story that eventually had a happy ending. I traced a finger over the ridges and valleys of skin, pulled tight across the memory of the burns.

One day Frau Berchta called me into the cottage and sat me down. She was more frail and paler than usual. Her hair was thinning around her face as if she was a thistle being blown away in the breeze. I watched as she pulled a book from the cupboard and put it on the table.

‘My mother gave me this book,’ she told me. ‘It is the bloodline of the Goddess. I want to pass it on to you because I have no blood daughter. All the children who came through were visitors, runaways, but you, Veronica, are different. You carry the blood of a wise woman.’

She opened the last page carefully and pointed. ‘This is me, Anna Maria Mueller – born in Ystad. My mother, Joanna Jonsdotter – Gammelstad. All the way back many, many years to Freyja and her mother Nerthus.’

Frau Berchta looked up at me and I smiled because she did look like an Anna Maria. She asked softly if she might write my name in the book as her daughter so that I could then carry on the tradition with my own daughters one day. It meant so much to the old woman that I agreed and let her write down my name, Veronica Junius – Bamberg, beneath hers. But beside it I wrote the name of my own dear mother, Rosa Dressler – Würzburg.

‘Keep it safe, my dear Veronica. May it travel through the ages,’ she smiled at me, ‘so that we might live forever.’

As the summer heat eased, I felt my heart swell when Christoff appeared at the edge of the clearing with his cart. He had returned and I watched as he spent weeks teaching Hans how to work with timber. Together they built another small cottage and repaired the rotting wood planks at the back of the main one. The shed was mended and the fence around the goats and their kids was fortified. My little brother was growing tall and strong and he worked hard.

‘My mother sold the house in Ebrach,’ Christoff told me one day as I churned the butter. ‘She is working as a nurse and maid for a Jesuit scholar in Peine. He is a good man who is appealing to the Pontiff to put an end to the witch-hunts. Your own torturer, the Hexenbischof, is under investigation and there is talk of tearing down the Hexenhaus.’

‘Praise be to God,’ I had said, shutting my eyes, trying not to think of the thousands of poor souls who had passed through that evil building.

Christoff had grown a beard and no longer had the bluster of youth. He was a man. His fair eyes were bright and filled with happiness and I hoped that some of his joy had a place for me.

‘Will you go north to Peine to be near her?’

He shook his head. ‘She has given me the proceeds from the sale of the house as she has little need for it when she is being paid full board for her service. I will,’ he paused and looked away, ‘I will find myself somewhere and build a farm to raise a family on, with just enough crop and livestock to sustain us, and perhaps some leftover for market.’

He gave me a long look after saying his piece, a look that made my heart hammer. I returned my attention to the butter, raising and dropping the plunger until the lump of thick sludge fell to the barrel below.

I looked up to see that someone was approaching, cutting away from the forest. I startled and felt panic rise in my chest but calmed when I saw that it was a woman carrying a small child in her arms. Wiping my hands on my skirts I stood and limped down to the creek to greet her, grateful for the distraction from Christoff’s conversation. I walked across to the stream and looked out. The hills behind the visitor were a muted pink and the scent of sweet, damp grass lingered in the cool air.

‘Welcome,’ I said, as she carefully crossed the little wooden bridge that Hans had built.

‘Is this the home of Frau Berchta?’ she asked, panting, her broad face flushed with the exertion of her walk. Her chest was heaving.

I could see that the child in her arms was unwell; a small thing, not old enough to walk but not a newborn either, and it was covered with pustules, raised red and weeping, some scabbing over.

‘Come quickly,’ I said to the woman. ‘I am Veronica and your child has the pox. We must hurry. What is your child’s name?’

‘Liesel,’ the woman said, her voice strained. ‘Please don’t let her die. There is a plague of pox running through the village and many are dying. The priests tell us it is God’s revenge for harbouring so many witches in these parts.’

I felt my face prick with anger. During my time with Frau Berchta she taught me many medicinal cures that could be found in nature and I had come to learn that health and sickness had its roots in the natural world around us. God did not punish people with illness. God was not cruel. Only people were cruel.

‘No,’ I told her as I took the child from her arms, her flesh burning from the scabs and blisters. ‘God is not punishing you or your family. This is a malady of balance and we need to even out the humours in your daughter.’

It came naturally to me, healing. Frau Berchta said I had it running in my blood and I believe she was right. People, through their habits and greed, had created disease and pestilence. We needed the earth and her vibrant well of health to restore us. That is why I loved the woods so much. It was a feast, a banquet, of wellness.

‘Are you not afraid you will be struck down by associating yourself with us?’ the woman asked.

‘No,’ I told her as I took the child to the newly built cottage. ‘I have an intestinal armour against the pox.’

The woman stopped and looked concerned.

‘That is witches’ talk,’ she said, silently blessing herself with the sign of the cross, ‘to say you have some supernatural protection.’

‘No,’ I told her and took the child into the house by the fire that Hans had lit earlier that day. I called out to him from where he was chasing the small goats about the pen. ‘Hans, come quick and stoke this fire up.’

I had moved into the spare cottage, where I could study my books and brew my own herbal concoctions. Frau Berchta had been instructing me intently but wanted me to build up my understanding to become a great apothecary and that required experimenting with different combinations of herbs, roots and minerals.

A long bench covered with thick plump cushions lay before the fire and gently I placed the child onto them and opened her smock to get a look at her lesions and sores.

‘She has been scratching badly,’ I said aloud, and the girl’s mother nodded. ‘I will make up a big vat of soothing and drawing tea with goldenseal root and yellow dock. And as much garlic and honey in water as we can get it into her. No food. She must let her stomach work on other things.’

‘Her stomach?’ the mother looked confused.

‘Most imbalance starts in the belly.’

I made up a big pail of garlic and honey water and left the mother to watch her child.

‘It is the pox,’ I told Christoff who looked concerned. ‘Come, I will give you some protection against it.’

By the fire in Frau Berchta’s cottage, I carefully prepared the mortar and pestle and sprinkled dried cow-pox scabs, which the old woman had collected over the years from children with the lesser pox, grinding them to a fine dust. After putting a long thin sharp needle into the fire, I let it cool and pierced the skin on Christoff’s muscled forearm. He flinched but looked at me in the firelight, trusting me implicitly. I poked some of the pox dust into his skin, pressing it in as far as I could without hurting him too deeply.

‘What is that?’ he asked.

‘Well,’ I smiled at him, ‘you know how milkmaids have a reputation for beautiful milky skin? It is not for the milk that they guzzle. It is because they all contract the cowpox, which is mild, and barely causes more than a few pockmarks on their bodies, leaving the skin smooth when they are well. And milkmaids rarely ever contract the full pox, which normally leaves survivors badly scarred. I just pushed some cowpox into you. You may feel poorly for a day or two but you will be forever protected from that deadly malady that this little girl is febrile with.’

Christoff blinked into the fire and then back at me, his eyes wide with awe.

‘You are the wisest person I know,’ he said. ‘You are so knowledgeable and brave. What is it about you, Veronica?’

‘Frau Berchta is far wiser than me,’ I laughed, ‘but I hope to be as wise as her some day.’

The cottage seemed smaller with Christoff in it and I went to the storeroom to find the herbs I needed to help the child. When I returned, the man looked pained and awkward, a beet colour rising from his cheeks. I stopped, startled by it.

‘Are you all right, Christoff?’ I asked.

‘I … um,’ he stammered. ‘Veronica, please sit here beside me.’

I sat.

‘I want to start a family and build my own home,’ he said in a rush. ‘And I have come to have strong feelings for you and think that … well, Veronica, would you do me the honour of being my wife?’

I smiled and felt tears well up in my eyes, blinding me. I put my hand on his.

‘Christoff,’ I began in a soft voice, ‘I owe you my life and will be forever indebted to you for the risks you took for me. I love you but I am afraid of leaving these woods. And I must take care of Hans and Frau Berchta. I still have so much to learn before I can devote my life to someone else.’

‘I would never stop you from your healing,’ he said pleadingly. ‘I will build you your own house of herbs, a house of healing, a Heilenhaus.’

I looked at him and was swamped by the love I saw in his eyes.

‘You would let me continue to heal? To practise that art? To become a wise woman?’

He nodded, holding my hands tightly in his.

‘It is your calling, Veronica, and I will be your most ardent champion,’ he said softly and leaned forward to kiss my lips.

I moved into the kiss and put my arms around Christoff’s wide shoulders, breathing in the smell of wood and sweat, and I knew that Mutti and Papa would approve of this good man.

‘Thank you, Christoff, for loving me and for loving Hans and for giving me a new life. I promise I will love you forever and we will one day have a house full of chuckling healthy children. And you will build me my very own Heilenhaus. I love you.’

It hit me in that moment and I knew that the rush of feelings that had flooded me in the woods by the stream after Christoff had rescued me were real. They weren’t just borne of gratitude and relief. I truly did love him.

Christoff and I took each other by the hand and looked in on Frau Berchta to tell her our grand news. She had been sleeping through the days more, complaining that her lethargy was sinking deeply into her.

We found her with her silver-white hair in a fan around her head on the white pillow and her crinkled face relaxed to a soft smooth marble. Her eyes were shut and her hands were crossed on her chest as if in prayer. She smiled a contented smile. Frau Berchta had flown off in her sleep to the next world, just as the winter geese had done when spring had begun to warm their wings.

‘Good night, dear Mother,’ I said, going to her, kissing her still-warm cheek, not taken up by sadness but overwhelmed by a deep gratitude for having known her. ‘You and Mutti take care of one another and look over me and Hans and Christoff as well. I owe you my life.’

‘Rest well, dear woman,’ Christoff said sadly as I squeezed his hand. ‘I will craft you the most beautiful coffin and we shall farewell you with all our love.’

We covered her with the embroidered quilt and as I took in the last smile on her beautiful face, I knew it was her final happiness for Christoff and me and for the children we would have and their children after that.